“Quiet, father!”

“Yes, yes.  Ah, this gathering out!  How far shall we go, laddie?”

“Four hundred miles to winter quarters.  From there no one yet knows,—­a thousand, maybe two thousand.”

“Aye, to the Rockies or beyond, even to the Pacific.  Joseph prophesied it—­where we shall be left in peace until the great day.”

The young man glanced quickly up.

“Or have time to grow mighty, if we should not be let alone.  Surely this is the last time the Lord would have us meek under the mob.”

“Ho, ho!  As you were twelve years ago, trudging by my side, valiant to fight if the Lord but wills it!  But have no fear, boy.  This time we go far beyond all that may tempt the spoiler.  We go into the desert, where no humans are but the wretched red Lamanites; no beasts but the wild ones of four feet to hunger for our flesh; no verdure, no nourishment to sustain us save the manna from on high,—­a region of unknown perils and unnamed deserts.  Truly we make the supreme test.  I do not overcolour it.  Prudence, hand me yonder scrap-book, there on the secretary.  Here I shall read you the words of no less a one than Senator Daniel Webster on the floor of the Senate but a few months agone.  He spoke on the proposal to fix a mail-route from Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia River in that far-off land.  Hear this great man who knows whereof he speaks.  He is very bitter.  ’What do we want with this vast, worthless area—­this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie-dogs?  To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snows?  What can we ever hope to do with that Western coast, a coast of three thousand miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbour on it.  Mr. President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific Coast one inch nearer to Boston than it now is!’”

The girl had been making little impatient flights about the room, as if awaiting an opportunity to interrupt the old man’s harangue, but even as she paused to speak, he began again: 

“There, laddie, do you hear him?—­arid deserts, shifting sand, snow and ice, wild beasts and wilder men—­that is where Israel of the last days shall be hidden to wait for the second coming of God’s Christ.  There, having received our washings and anointings in the temple of God on earth, we shall wait unmolested, and spread the curtains of Zion in due circumspection.  And what a migration to be recorded in another sacred history ages hence!  Surely the blood of our martyred Prophet hath not smoked to heaven in vain.  Where is there a parallel to this hegira?  They from Egypt went from a heathen land, a land of idolatry, to a fertile home chosen for them by the Lord.  But we go from a fair, smiling land of plenty and pretended Christianity into the burning desert.  They have driven us to the edge; now they drive us in.  But God works his way among the peoples of earth, and we are strong.  Who knows but that we shall in our march throw up a highway of holiness to the rising generation?  So let us round up our backs to the burden!”